Deciphering the Libertarian Party’s Position on Abortion: Key Points Unpacked
On this episode of Dare to Think, host Kerry Baldwin delves into the complex history of the Libertarian Party’s stance on abortion rights. In her exploration, Kerry highlights key shifts in the party’s platform over the decades, shedding light on the diverse perspectives within the Libertarian Party.
As she navigates through the party’s evolving positions on abortion, Kerry addresses the recent removal of the abortion plank from the platform, which has sparked debates among delegates who hold varying views on abortion.
Are libertarians pro-choice? On the 50th anniversary of the Libertarian Party, the platform now stands silent on abortion. This is no insignificant change. It doesn’t mean the party is now officially pro-life. It doesn’t mean the party has abandoned its principles on women’s rights. To understand what it does mean and what it doesn’t, two things have to be established. The LP Platform is not libertarian philosophy, but it is expected to accurately reflect libertarian philosophy. And the historical record of the platform on abortion and children’s rights reveals a consistent failure to work out that philosophy coherently.
The LP’s first platform in 1972 addressed abortion in the context of overpopulation, an awkward framing that reflects the cultural moment more than any principled libertarian analysis. Over the following decades, the party revised its language repeatedly: 1986, 1994, 2000, each iteration attempting and failing to reconcile self-ownership, individual rights, and the rights of children into a single coherent plank. The division was never resolved. It was papered over.
At the 2022 convention, a coalition of both pro-life and pro-choice delegates voted to remove Section 1.5 entirely. The argument for removal was straightforward: the party was reportedly split roughly in thirds, pro-life, pro-choice, and somewhere in between, and a platform that claimed neutrality while taking a position was doing neither honestly. Silence, the argument went, is more consistent than a plank that cannot reflect actual libertarian consensus.
The Mises Caucus and others also invoked the Dallas Accord, the longstanding principle that the LP should function as a broad coalition for all libertarians, regardless of where they land on contested philosophical questions. On that view, abortion belongs in the category of questions libertarians disagree about, not questions the platform should answer for them.
The harder question is what this leaves unresolved. The core libertarian commitments, self-ownership, the non-aggression principle, opposition to the use of state force to compel or prohibit, remain in the platform. What is absent is any account of how those principles apply to abortion specifically, and in particular how they apply when the rights of women and the rights of offspring come into conflict. That is the philosophical work that remains. Removing a failed plank is not the same as answering the question. It is, at most, an honest acknowledgment that the question has not been answered yet, and that libertarian philosophers have not done the work needed to answer it well.
Main Points of Discussion
| 00:00 | Introduction: Is the LP pro-choice? What the platform’s silence means |
| 05:30 | The LP’s abortion plank from 1972 through 2000: a history of failed attempts |
| 06:44 | Division within the LP: the long-standing split on abortion |
| 08:45 | The case for removal: neutrality, consistency, and avoiding infighting |
| 11:02 | The Dallas Accord and the “big tent” argument |
| 14:30 | Does silence on abortion threaten the rights of women? |
| 18:43 | What other LP platform sections say about individual rights and government intervention |
| 20:30 | Core libertarian values that remain in the platform after removal |
| 23:02 | Why removal was a move toward consistency, not abandonment of principle |
| 23:45 | The unresolved philosophical task: reconciling women’s and fetal rights under the NAP |
FAQs: the Libertarian Party’s Position on Abortion
1. What is the Libertarian Party’s current position on abortion?
As of 2022, the Libertarian Party platform is silent on abortion. Section 1.5 — the abortion plank — was removed at the 2022 convention by a coalition of both pro-life and pro-choice delegates. The platform no longer takes an official position on whether abortion constitutes a rights violation or a protected individual choice. The core libertarian commitments to self-ownership, the non-aggression principle, and opposition to state coercion remain in the platform — but how those principles apply to abortion is left unaddressed.
2. Why did the Libertarian Party remove its abortion plank in 2022?
The removal reflected a long-standing and unresolved division within the party. Delegates were reportedly split roughly in thirds — pro-life, pro-choice, and somewhere in between. Proponents of removal argued that a platform claiming neutrality while taking a position was doing neither honestly. Silence, on this view, is more consistent than a plank that cannot accurately reflect libertarian consensus. The Dallas Accord also played a role — the principle that the LP should function as a broad coalition for all libertarians, including those who disagree on contested philosophical questions like abortion.
3. What is the Dallas Accord and how does it relate to abortion?
The Dallas Accord is a longstanding agreement within the Libertarian Party that the LP should remain a broad coalition — a “big tent” — for libertarians who hold different views on questions where libertarian philosophy does not yield a single clear answer. On the abortion question, the Mises Caucus and other delegates invoked the Dallas Accord to argue that abortion belongs in the category of genuinely contested philosophical questions, not questions the platform should resolve on behalf of all libertarians. The accord effectively argues for organizational neutrality on issues where principled libertarians disagree.
4. Does the LP’s silence on abortion mean it is now pro-life?
No. The removal of the abortion plank does not make the Libertarian Party officially pro-life, nor does it signal that the party has abandoned its principles on the rights of women. It reflects what the historical record already made clear: libertarians are genuinely divided on abortion, and the party’s repeated attempts to paper over that division with platform language failed. Silence is not a position — it is an acknowledgment that the philosophical work needed to reach a principled consensus has not been done.
5. What is the libertarian philosophical challenge on abortion and the NAP?
The non-aggression principle holds that the initiation of force against another person or their property is impermissible. The abortion question forces libertarian philosophers to confront whether abortion constitutes such an initiation of force — which requires first answering questions about the nature and standing of the unborn. Self-ownership grounds the rights of women; the same principle of self-ownership, applied consistently, raises the question of whether the unborn possess it as well. Reconciling these claims under a single coherent libertarian framework is the task that remains. The LP’s platform silence makes that task more visible, not less urgent.
